What If?

What if a child just wanted to be a child and dream different things and be different things every day and be happy and free, feeling loved and safe? What if as adults, we took joy in the very simple things our children love and supported them instead of pushed them? What if letting a child live in the moment while dreaming about the future through free play,fun creativity, and imagination, set them to a path they could enjoy and embrace instead of worry about? It takes baby steps to fix the problem. We do not want to try and change the culture the same way it manifests itself. Its all about the journey. Sometimes you have to treat the symptom to relax the patient first, then treat the disease. Peace of mind is victory

GUEST BLOG LIFE ON THE PLAYGROUND

Life on the Playground

As a primary school teacher for the last 10 plus years, I have always loved taking my classes out onto the playground.  You get to know your students in a whole different way as you watch them "free play".  Children spend a large part of their days being told what and when they are going to do things and ways to think about things.  Teachers place them into homogeneous groups and heterogeneous groups to work on problems.  Many primary teachers also assign seats so students are told where to sit and whom to sit next to.  (There are many sound educational reasons that these decisions happen.)

Enter...the playground.  Recess, it's most kids favorite part of the school day.  I have students who cannot tell time, but they know when recess happens.  If we ever miss recess, half the class lets me know it. 

As we burst out of the school onto the playground, choices happen and groups form almost instantly.  You have the group who loves to swing on the swings and see whose feet can touch the sky first.  Then there is another group who imagines they are the "good" guys and the other group who are the "bad" guys (they have to take turns on this one), and they run full speed ahead trying to catch each other.  Then you have the group who are competing to see who can get across the overhead ladder the fastest.  And then the group who just likes to hang out under the slide chatting.

Leaders of those groups form and it is interesting to see how that leadership takes shape.   If leaders don't think about the group as a whole, they are quickly ignored, and possibly avoided, and the group quickly follows another who values the group's wishes.  All of these decisions happen without an adult orchestrating the process.  Students who might not get the opportunity to lead, because maybe physical prowess is not valued in the classroom, get the chance to shine.  Their self esteem soars!

 By Kathleen Stanley

Winning, Development, and Fun are not mutually exclusive

3 in 1

I recently interviewed a high school varsity coach who also coached an n “elite club” team. The sport does not matter for this discussion. Hopefully by now you know my mantra that if it is really true, than it applies to all sports, and life. I did not tape record this interview because quite frankly, I did not think it was going to be anything special. I was interested in getting some more background information on the “elite” club team mentality. Specifically, how it applied to the younger children.

The beginning of the interview went very well. The coach was quite open about what he thought an “elite” player was and how his club tried to get all the younger players pretty much equal time during the games and to stress fun.

 I explained to him that was very commendable because only 1% of the kids going to college play at the DI level and only half of them play for free. I also told him that human beings don’t physically develop until their early twenties so it was good to get kids as much playing time and fun as possible. We believe in inclusion not exclusion.

What he didn’t understand or see is that I was trying to plant an idea with him about how he could adapt this fun philosophy to his high school team.

I was struck by his belief in winning over development and that how he understood very few of them would ever get a D I scholarship, but it didn’t matter to him. He had to win to keep his job, he said. But the rub is, he had only won one sectional championship, and then his team was loaded. Why wasn’t he open to change?

 I went and watched his team practice and play in two different games. Stunned doesn’t even begin to reveal how different his approach was with his high school team versus the club team he coached, or the way he said he coached. He rarely substituted. Even far ahead or behind he did not use a lot of extra players unless it was a complete blowout. I went back to see him for another interview.

I started by asking him about his substitution policy as it pertained to his high school team. He said that the reason he rarely substituted was that his starting players needed to continue to play together so that they could form a more cohesive unit. When I explained to him that his starters rarely completed more than four passes in a row, he just shook his head and said the subs would complete even less passes. These players were all mostly “elite” club players and I wondered how they could be so weak in this department if they played on the same “elite” club team all year.

Again, I was stunned at the answer. He said that kids have to play on “elite” club teams if they want to get the exposure by major colleges to get a DI scholarship. When I asked how many kids he has sent to a DI college on a full athletic scholarship he could not answer. When I checked around, I found the answer to be ZERO.

I then asked him why his substitute players, (a term I dislike immensely) should practice hard for him if they knew they would not be afforded a chance to play in a game. He stated evenly that they were role players and knew their position on the team was to help the starters (I dislike that term also) get better and to push the starters in practice so that they could play better.

When I told him I went to two of his games and saw the disgruntled players sitting on the bench ignoring what was going on during the game he did not believe me. He said that the substitute players weren’t good enough to play very much and that they had not developed during the year to even suggest to him that they deserved playing time.

When I asked him maybe the reason they had not developed was because they felt helpless and knew no matter what they did they would not get to play. He got upset and asked me what the purpose of the interview really was? He suggested that I did not know enough about his team to question him about playing time. He had won a championship coaching in high school and played at a very high level and knew what he was doing.

Now I could have let it go right there but I figured since I had gone this far I might as well ask one more question. Did he think playing more players and creating inter team competition would help his team, keep his better players rested and fresh, and foster a greater team chemistry? Which, of course would lead to a higher level of play, and more victories, I believe. No he said. The weaker players would not get better and would just bring his good layers “down” when they were playing instead of the starters or with mixed in with them that would wreck any team chemistry. The he added the kicker. Besides, his players wanted him to play to win and they were content to sit on the bench.

If you think this is an isolated incident or interview, it is not. You want to know why? This is actually a combination of three different interviews I did with three different coaches in three different sports. I melded their answers into one.

You can follow VJ on Twitter @VJJStanley, face book frozenshorts, website frozenshorts.com, email vj@frozenshorts.com, and at his office 585-743-1020

No college with my sport

No college with my sport

For those of you following along with my program I first want to thank you for your support. Trying to change a culture is very difficult. Your support is truly appreciated.

There has been a new recent development in high school and club sports. Children are purposely choosing colleges to attend that do not have their sport.

That is right; a purposeful decision is being made to “Stop the Tsunami.” There can be no parental disappointment in the child if they are attending a college that does not have their “chosen” sport and they are not playing if the college offers the academics the child is interested in. They go to a college a good distance away so that the parents cant “pop in.”

I am talking about the 99% here, not the true DI athlete with multiple offers.

 Very few parents will push their children to pick a college that they don’t want to attend. When it does happen, we see the child go to that college for one year, still not play or play sparingly, and then transfer to a college that does not have their sport.

We have interviewed many of these parents and children and the disconnect between the child’s desires and the parents’ wishes offer a stark contrast. On one hand the child is so sick of having to play their sport year round that they see college as an opportunity to break the chain that binds them to their parents’ wishes. Some of the children say things to me like: “I don’t want to play anymore.”  “The college that I wanted didn’t have my sport.” “It wasn’t fun anymore.” And my favorite, “It never really was a priority of mine.”

Others went to a college that had their sport  and were so turned off at the prospect of doing this for another 4 years that they talked about the coach and the commitment being overwhelming and didn’t visit another college that had their sport.

On the other hand the majority of parents that I talked to were genuinely surprised by their children’s decision. Not that they were disappointed, they just didn’t see it coming. When I explained to them what their child was probably thinking, almost all of them, okay all of them said “now that you explain it to me, when we were visiting colleges our child was way more interested in the non athletic parts of the college.” Or something to that affect.

When I ran into the child or the parent a year later the stories were almost always the same. The child was relieved and the parent was now looking back with 20/20 vision and had the light go on!

Assembly Line Kids

FUN, is what you are doing to or asking a child to do fun? if not they eventually will lose interest. It really is that simple.If I keep telling a child what to do do I eventually crush the spirit. the creativity that drives a child to get better? Balance in a child is seen by them switching activities and changing their minds on what they want to do many times in a day, an hour. You see a child playing with friends by themselves. cant we create activities that mirror that as they seem to enjoy that more than structure. Are we as adults not obligated to teach children at their level and their interests and not what we feel they should be as adults?give a child a ball and step back and watch how creative they are and the things they do and games they make up all on their own? Amazing! Do you want kids to go through youth and H.S. sports like an assembly line worker? Just putting the pieces together without creativity?True victory comes when children are matched evenly and the will and desire to excel is brought out in fair competition and positive stress

Swimming across the lake

Swimming in the big lake.

Let’s compare youth and high school sports to swimming across a lake.

You must train to do this. You spend countless hours on your journey to prepare for this. You go to many swimming events and at these events you compare yourself to others. There are some pretty prestigious ponds to swim before you swim in the really big lake.

You tell your friends where you are doing to swim this weekend and even tell them about some pretty good swimmers that are swimming at this pond.

You start telling your friends about the big lake you are going to swim in. They don’t know much about lakes so you can basically make up any lake and say that the people at that lake who are in charge of the lake have invited you to swim and who will know the difference.

Now when the time comes and you have already swam three quarters across the last pond to get you to the big lake, and are close enough to the shore, you see this sign

You are not allowed to swim here. We did not invite you and this lake is for invited swimmers only. Holy crap, what do I do now?

Well since no one really knows that you were told you can’t swim at this prestigious lake, why not make some  stuff up. You were hurt, you didn’t like the coach, and you had other offers, anything but the truth, that you simply weren’t good enough.

So what do you do for the rest of the season? Do you really believe that you are going to out and give your best? Or do you get frustrated and disrupt?

 Back in my day we didn’t have that. We played for fun and if something happened it happened. We played at one level and if were good enough, lucky enough, and healthy enough, were invited to play at the next level. We dreamed when we were kids, but really, we just kept playing. And when that lest game in high school came, it was no big deal

I was with a young man who said he was going to get a full ride to college. He told me the school; I told him I could check on it. He said why I would do that. Why was I ruining his parade? I said because it was a lie that was effecting other kids.

I asked why would you make something like that up? Why would your parents?

He had no answer.

Building a championship team

The first thing you need is talent. You can’t take a ham sandwich to a steak roast. I have played and coached over 30 championship teams and mentored another dozen or so coaches and teams to championships in all team sports. The one common denominator with all those teams has been talent. Coaches don’t know how to win, nobody does.

Winning is a result or a destination. I am sure if Scotty Bowman, Joe Torre, Greg Popovich, or Vince Lombardi coached a team with no talent they would not win. Scotty Bowman won championships in Montreal, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. Did he forget how to win in Buffalo?

Some of the youth and high school coaches are getting paid and, therefore, put a status on what they do, and in turn, winning games. They wear their team colors wherever they go and want to get recognized and praised for their win loss record and the level they coach. Well that’s fine, but remember, they open themselves up to criticism that way. They come off as a professional coach so they should expect the same kind of heat and analyzing.

When one of these coaches scouts another team, understand that most games are lost not won. Why then, after they scout, doesn’t their team win every time they play the team they scouted? They need to concentrate on their own team and not go out to make a show at another team’s game they are not involved in.

Coaches need to lose the swag. My teams all had humility and character. If the coach showboats, they will too. Say please and thank you. Have great manners, they are important.

Next a coach needs to take their ego out of it. It’s all about the journey and the kids. I repeatedly see coaches taking all the credit for wins, while continually making excuses for the losses.  A coach has about a 10% say on his or her team’s performance once a game starts. When my teams won championships, it was because of them. When we lost, it was my fault.

 A coach trying to manage games over player development has continually cost his/her team more losses than games won. Short term versus long term, except in that final championship game, will always have an expensive cost, even if the coach can’t see it. I see coaches scheduling easier opponents or dropping down a division to just to boost their win loss record. Then whamo, they lose in the playoffs.

 Coaches have to have patience. The last kid on a coach’s bench could become the coach’s best player, but not if he/she sits. No one gets better sitting on the bench. And remember, 70% of your best player is not better that 100% of a lesser talented player. Effort counts a lot! You never know when “suck” is going to happen.  A coach needs to be ready for it. How? Play a lot of kids. They learn from internal realization not external force. Let them make mistakes, and learn how to correct them. The more kids a coach plays the more they will compete. If they struggle? Well, that’s where real true coaching comes in. Learn how to motivate them. That means truly caring about them over a victory. That means little or no yelling at them. No one likes it when parents yell at them so coaches shouldn’t yell at the kids.

 And coaches should lay off the refs.  They are human too. Coaches need them.

I have seen some great coaches in my time. One thing they all had in common was humility. They really coached relationships. They took great joy in the success of their least talented player as much if not more than their best player or biggest win. They continually take time to build trust, which is a critical component of success and a must life skill to teach.

Now understand I am not talking about real professional coaches at the DI or major league pro level. There is no correlation to what they do and what youth and high school coaches are doing. “Professional coaches do it.” Well, these kids aren’t pros and 99.9% of them won’t play pro so they shouldn’t be coached like they are.

Interteam competition. Man, I cannot stress this enough. Play by performance for the older kids, post puberty, is the key ingredient to getting a team better. Once again, over and over, I see a coach playing his/her “horses” even when they are playing badly and losing. I watched an NFL coach not give his second string guys any playing time, and then was surprised when they didn’t play well when they went in for injuries. Coaches refuse to put in other kids fearing that they will lose a game, and not seeing the disgust the kids on the bench display. FEAR of seeing their team in the newspaper with a lopsided score, and then wondering what happened when their team loses in a close game because there was little competition coached in practice.

Parents stay out of it. Let the coach coach. You don’t have someone yelling at you at work or questioning your calls. On the way to the game or practice, just tell your child to try and have fun. On the way home, tell them you love them. Don’t yell instructions to the kids while they are playing. Do not go around the stands and tell the other parents what you think about the coach or the game. Lay off the officials. You can’t do any better than them so be quiet. If you think this is harsh, you are right. We have polled over 1000 kids and almost all of them don’t want their parents voices heard during a game or practice.

Laugh and have fun. You may not think fun is a critical component of a team’s journey to a championship, but it is. The more fun you are having the more you will want to keep playing. The more you play in that environment, the more effort your kids will put out. And don’t forget, these kids are friends, and friends want their friends to do well. When that happens, they naturally ramp up the competition between themselves. Create the right environment, and competition will ensue.

You want to talk about the will to win; nobody will try harder than me. Let’s talk about competing.  Coaches should make the teams even and fair, or at the very least, let the other team have more talent than mine, because I want to get better. Then let’s play. But that involves inclusion not exclusion. So if someone is talking about winning a meaningless game in the beginning of the season to pad my win loss total, by shortening the bench, I’m out. That’s entitlement, not competition. You want to be the best, play the best.

Heck, in a championship game I’ll bench my mother to win if she’s not playing well, and it won’t faze me.

And there you have it. Be patient, it’s all about the journey. Play a lot of kids, have fun, and build relationships. If you do that, you put yourself in a position more times than not to play for a championship. And that’s what I wanted to do as a coach. I wanted to put my team in a position to play the last game of the year. Even if you don’t win, you will have lasting memories that will far outweigh a single game victory. And really, isn’t that the final championship test of a true coach?

If you are interested in learning how to coach a championship journey, please give us a call or email me at vj@frozenshorts.com. We teach it every day at Frozen Shorts.